that name

By William Palmer

 

tide in—

imagine
waves scraping away

that name
and the lies upon lies

that feed off it,
dissolving them in foam

imagine
the mugshot gone

the blue suits gone
the long red ties

around our country’s neck
gone

 


William Palmer’s poetry has appeared recently in JAMA, J Journal, One Art, On the Seawall, Talking River Review, and The Westchester Review. He lives in Traverse City, Michigan.

Image credit: Sean P on Unsplash.


A note from Writers Resist

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Encomium for the First Truly Epic Poem

By M. J. Lewis

 

This is the best poem you have ever read.
Everybody is saying it. Everyone.
Other poems have tried to be as wonderful,
tried to be honored with the best aesthetics,
struggled to be as tremendous as this
and to get away with things like that—believe me—
but they don’t know how. They’re weak and small;
they whine and fumble and lose all the time,
lose to limericks and haiku, senryu and lays.

But not this poem.

This poem spawns only success, has nothing but victories,
knows nothing of loss or the literature of losing,
can’t keep itself from winning, always, bigly.

There has never been a poem like this one.
Elegies and epithalamiums, idylls and odes,
Sestinas and sonnets and carpe diem canzones—
all have tried and failed to be as terrific as this,
the greatest poem, in the greatest journal,
in the greatest country, in the greatest universe on Earth.

This poem is freedom.
This poem doesn’t hide behind walls: it builds them.
This poem is a leader, a champion of meter,
of measures that beat the best out of everyone.
This poem is faith, the flag, a founding father:
a loaded gun in a good man’s hand.
This poem is the voice of America—the groin
in the bridge to a better tomorrow.

Literature, everywhere, is broken—lies in ruins.
But not this poem. Never.
No one had ever heard of Ozymandias—of might or despair.
But this poem had—and only it has the answers, has a plan.
Only this poem is doing something about the wreckage,
the crumbling rubble that sad, little phonies have left us with.
Only the feet of this poem can stand in the swamp,
Only its passages can get us back on the course.

This poem takes risks (like zeugma) but not you for a fool.
Very fine people know this poem puts them first.
But this poem loves the others too, even critics, even readers.
Some of this poem’s best friends are readers.

This poem is going very well, don’t you think?
It really is amazing. Incredible.
It has all the best words.
It’s already shown you some very important stanzas.
Very important stanzas.
This poem alone knows how welcome you are.

There is just nothing like this poem. Nothing.
And only this epic—really something very special—
can make things better and the better the best.
By simply gazing on such greatness,
you can feel yourself begin
to slide past goodness.
By surveilling and scanning but never quite reading, you
can already feel yourself tired of winning,
can already feel yourselves safer, more similar,
can already feel this poem, like nothing before in history,
through huge epizeuxis and classy anaphora,
making us great again great again great again.

Making us more like this poem.

 


M.J. Lewis is a critic, cartoonist at www.gapintheatlas.com, and creative writer. He is currently an assistant professor of literature at Al-Quds Bard College in Abu Dis, Palestine.

Photo credot: Internet meme.

O Captain! Some Captain!

By Mark Williams

after Walt Whitman 

O Captain! Some Captain! Our fearful trip’s not done,
The ship is foundering, front to back, the prize we sought’s not won.
The port is far, the chants I hear, the people all protesting,
While follow eyes the unsteady keel, the vessel grim and shaking;

But O heartless, heartless heart!
O the beating blood as red
As the MAGA hat that lies,
On your self-serving head.

O Captain! Some Captain! Rise up and hear the news;
Black Lives Matter flags are flung, for you the bullhorns shrill.
Not for you, bouquets and wreathes—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you we call, the marching masses, our angry faces burning;

Some Captain! Some leader!
You nearly fell on your head.
It’s a nightmare: if on this deck,
You wobble yet next year. O dread!

You Captain answer not our questions, your lips are pale, speak swill.
A leader who intends us harm, your pulse beats all for ill,
The ship’s not anchored safe and sound, its voyage far from done,
If from this trip this vanquished ship does not come in, you’ve won;

Exult not O shores, ring not O bells!
I walk with mournful tread, where
If you steer this ship next year,
our nation sinks cold and dead.

 


Mark Williams’s poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Rattle, Nimrod, New Ohio Review, and The American Journal of Poetry. His poems in response to the Trump administration have appeared in Writers Resist, Poets Reading the News, The New Verse News, and Tuck Magazine. He lives in Evansville, Indiana.

Photo by zhao chen on Unsplash.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

By Gary Laitman

 

Listen, as your friend I feel it is time for us to openly discuss something that’s been bothering me for a while, but it’s a somewhat delicate matter. Please understand I am only bringing this up because I feel that you have been taken advantage of and I do not want you to get hurt any longer. I know this is not what you want to hear, and I promise I am not going to say “I told you so,” but the time has come for you to face facts … he’s just not that into you.

Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand how you fell for him. He promised he was going to be different from all the others, and Lord knows we all wanted that. You’ve been through some tough times in recent years, and it must have felt good to have someone recognize that. He certainly sounded sincere when he spoke and embraced your struggle. It’s not difficult to see why you believed him when he said he wanted nothing more than to stand by your side and help you make a better life together. This makes a lot of sense when you look back on it. But the bottom line is—and you must realize this by now—he was using you. Yes, I’ve said it, he was using you. He did not care and he does not care about you. All along he was using you.

Remember how he railed against the deficit all through the months leading up to the election? You know those tax breaks that he said are going to help bring back jobs and raise our collective incomes? They are going to add $1.5 trillion to the deficit!

Did he tell you that? Did he maybe mention the fact that he and his family are going to receive millions of dollars as a direct result of this new tax law? Maybe it just slipped his mind. Oh, sure, he might have thrown you a few extra bucks in your paycheck, but that’s just like buying your wife a cup a coffee at the local diner while taking your goomah out for a fancy steak dinner.

There’s also the matter of his hotels and country clubs, raking in the dough from people who just want to spend some quality time with him. What a strange coincidence that the fee to join Mar-a-Lago doubled last year. Could he be enriching himself? Not to mention Jared‘s businesses getting half a billion dollars in loans from people with whom he met while in the White House.

Are you starting to see the pattern here? There is no “us” in his “USA.” It is all about him and his family.

I don’t mean to belabor the point, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there were plenty of red flags you chose to ignore. You certainly heard the rumors. We all knew there was something going on with the Russians. No doubt, he had cheated in the past. There was also the constant bragging, not to mention the compulsive lying.

Why were you so willing to overlook this? Did you really think he was going to change his ways for you?

I’m sorry if I sound angry, but this has gone too far, and you deserve better. I don’t care what your other friends say. I’ve heard every excuse in the book including those who justify his behavior by saying he’s a businessman with no government experience.

Really? You and I have been working for more than thirty years: Have you ever seen a successful business run like he and his cronies are running the government? The turnover rate in his administration is worse than a bad year at one of Ivanka’s sweatshops. He hires and fires remarkably unqualified people at an alarming rate, and, quite frankly, the Gambino crime family is more organized than our federal government right now.

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. Again, I want you to know that I value your friendship and I’m only saying these things because I want what’s best for you. So please reassess. Take a fresh look. Open your mind and join the movement to resist his agenda. Also, if you’re done with it, would you mind returning the shovel you borrowed last spring? Thanks.

 


Gary Laitman is an international man of mystery and a proud member of the resistance who has previously written opinion pieces for the Bucks County Courier Times, where this piece previously appeared.

Photo credit: Nicolas Raymond via a Creative Commons license.